2.5 shakes like hell and wont run very well

so here is the deal, I got a 1999 ford ranger very cheep becouse it had engine problems. it was hard to start, and it would bearly idol. and it wouldnt respond to the gas ped. so I thought it was eather the Idol air valve or the TPS. so I changed both of them and cleaned the throttle body out too. no i can get it to run a little better and I mean a little. but it still shakes like crazy. I noticed that the crank pulley wobbles a little, so I thought that the balancer is bad but I called everywhere and they dont list a balancer for a 2.5 only a crank pulley.

It sounds like it's not running on all four cylinders, or else the timing is off so far that it barely runs. I'd check each cylinder by pulling plug wires one cylinder at a time to see if it drops off any worse (or just dies). Who knows, maybe you got lucky enough that a couple of plug wires got switched.

But the wobbly crank pulley makes me thing that it is indeed a cam timing problem, possibly something has come loose or cracked down there. The timing belt pulley is a cogged pulley behing the crank pulley. You'll want to line everything up and check all your timing marks, maybe even pull the crank pulley off and spin the engine over while looking at the snout of the crank to make sure it's not bent.

well I pulled the belt off the crank pully to pull it like you said and guess what it was loose very loose I could shake it and rotate in with my had and the bolt didnt move with it. and I have tried to take the bolt off and I cant I even braced the braker bar against the frame and used the starter to loosen the bolt and it just stoped the starter...........no budge. HELP ME!!!!

Swap the fuel pump relay with another one in the under-hood relay box once you get the crank pulley fixed, it can cause hard starting, low idling, and extremely rough running with zero throttle response if the fuel pump relay or the fuel pump itself becomes intermittent or just flat out goes bad.

TigerDan is spot on though, I've never had a starter that had access to a good battery not be able to break the crank bolt loose.

Easiest (and cheapest) thing would be to find a used 2.5 or 2.3 to swap in, then you wouldn't have any wiring or other conversion hassles to deal with. If you wanted to do a V8 conversion, you could find a V8 Explorer or Mountaineer as a donor vehicle and then it's practically a bolt-in swap for your Ranger...but with any conversion, I think you'll be putting a bit more than the quoted $1200 into it, especially if you have to pay someone else to do the work! I'm doing a 5.0 swap on my '89 Ranger, and I've got quite a bit more than that into it...I don't even want to total it up!

That's why I said the easiest and cheapest thing to do would be to swap in a used 2.5 or 2.3. Swapping in a 2.3 isn't really a conversion, it should be a direct bolt-in swap. It'll only get expensive when you start to swap in engines that were never offered in the Ranger. I'd jump on one of those 2.3 you mentioned...

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